What's the Use?

There are two types of gun owners in this country: those that got their guns legally, and those that did not. We know that we have a problem; guns keep getting used in robberies, or random shootings, or other crimes. We keep passing new and more restrictive gun-control laws, and the problem seems to be getting worse, instead of better. Why is that? Well, let's stop to consider: gun control laws may make accidental shootings less frequent, and they make crimes of opportunity or crimes of passion less frequent, someone who intends to use a gun to commit a crime probably isn't going to have much compunction about committing a crime in order to obtain a gun. At the same time, when gun-control laws are restrictive, a law-abiding citizen is considerably less likely to have a gun with which to defend him/herself. Statistically, one is much more likely to be victim of a violent crime in an area where gun-control laws are most restrictive, but we have to do something. The good thing about gun-control laws is that they do reduce accidental shootings, and they reduce gun theft (it's hard to steal a gun from somebody who doesn't have one). Unfortunately, the rate of other crimes goes up, and more than make up for the gains provided by those laws. So what do we do? The intelligent thing would be to sit down, do some careful research and figure out what we could do that would actually be effective, and if there are ways to better enforce the laws that we already have. Unfortunately, politics being what it is, any politician that actually tries to study the problem, gets accused of dragging his feat--kowtowing to the gun lobby, so our gun-control laws tend to be a series of band-aid solutions, resulting from knee-jerk reactions to real problems that Joe Taxpayer (understandably) wants the government to deal with. This results in a great deal of frustration for the law-abiding citizen in a high-crime area who just wants to protect his family.
Sometimes we, as Christians, become frustrated with ourselves. We set out, each day, to live the life that God would have us to live, and most days (if not every day), we find ourselves falling so far short of the potential that we have in God. That can be so depressing. Sometimes we just want to throw up our hands and quit. "What's the use?" we say, "I'm never going to get this right." And yet, we know that God has promised. He didn't promise to make us perfect, He promised that His Grace is sufficient. In First Thessalonians 4, Apostle Paul uses the phrase "we which are alive and remain." I've noticed that most people seem to think that he meant, "we which are alive and remain alive," but that would be redundant. It's redundant enough that he used the phrase twice (in verse 15 and verse 17); I submit that he meant, "we which are alive and remain faithful, which remain trying, which remain striving for the Kingdom..." What's the use? If we continue in His Word, we shall be given a crown of Glory that fadeth not away...
It just doesn't get any better than that.

Glass Houses

File this one under 'Figure the Odds.'
It has occurred to me that I should probably have multiple blogs, and blog on a different theme on each blog, but I really don't have the time to keep up with one blog as it is... I admit that I think it would be nice, from the reader's perspective, if you could just check 'Religious Ramblings' for my latest thoughts on Religion, or 'Crime Ramblings' for crime stories, or 'Immigration Ramblings,' etc. Maybe when I retire (in about fifty years).

In the meantime, let me take an entirely different tack: In the movie 'Blazing Saddles' (which some of you have probably never heard of), Gene Wilder plays the town drunk, who also happens to be (or have been) the Waco Kid. The Waco Kid, in his heyday, was so well known for being a fast draw and an accurate shot, that people came from miles away just to see if they could outdraw the Waco Kid. Eventually, the enormity of that caused him to 'crawl into a bottle.'

It occurs to me that we, as human beings, have a certain amount of competitiveness built into us. Sometimes it's healthy, sometimes it's not. When you hear about a gunslinger, and just have to know if you're faster than he is (and that sort of thing really did happen), that's not healthy. If you run across someone who is much better at something that you thought you were good at, and it encourages you to practice, practice, practice, until you are really good at it, too (even if you eventually have to accept the fact that you will never be as good), then that's healthy.

Sometimes people will go out of their way to knock someone down a peg. That's not necessarily healthy--although, sometimes, a person does need to be knocked down a peg. Occasionally, someone will get bad press about something that is totally unrelated to their specialty. You've heard statements like, "Einstein was a genius, but he never learned to tie his shoes." I don't know if that's actually true, but what if it is? Granted, it kind of makes the rest of us feel less inferior, but let's face it, everybody has problems; everybody has lapses in judgment.

I asked the question the other day, "Know any perfect people walking around today?" I didn't then, and I haven't met any since.